Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Observational Study
. 2025 May;34(5):108261.
doi: 10.1016/j.jstrokecerebrovasdis.2025.108261. Epub 2025 Feb 21.

Residual inflammatory risk is associated with leukoaraiosis in patients with ischemic stroke

Xiuqun Gong  1 , Yuwen Gang  2 , Zeyu Lu  3 , Qiankun Cai  4 , Min Xue  5 , Beibei Zhu  6 , Xiaosi Cheng  7 , Chuanqing Yu  8 , Jun Lu  9
Affiliations
Free article
Observational Study

Residual inflammatory risk is associated with leukoaraiosis in patients with ischemic stroke

Xiuqun Gong et al. J Stroke Cerebrovasc Dis. 2025 May.
Free article

Abstract

Objective: Emerging evidence has highlighted the clinical significance of residual inflammation risk (RIR) in cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, with studies demonstrating its association with disease recurrence and poor prognosis. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between RIR and leukoaraiosis (LA) severity in patients with ischemic stroke.

Methods: In this observational cohort study, we classified patients into four groups based on low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) levels: RIR (LDL-C < 2.6 mmol/L and hsCRP ≥ 2 mg/L), residual cholesterol risk (RCR) (LDL-C ≥ 2.6 mmol/L and hsCRP < 2 mg/L), both risk or residual cholesterol and inflammatory risk (RCIR) (LDL-C ≥ 2.6 mmol/L and hsCRP ≥ 2 mg/L) and neither risk (LDL-C < 2.6 mmol/L and hsCRP < 2 mg/L). LA presence and severity were assessed using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and graded according to the Fazekas scale. Ordinal logistic regression analyses were performed to evaluate the association between RIR and LA severity.

Results: Among 643 enrolled patients, 413 (64.2 %) exhibited LA. The distribution of patients across RIR, RCR, RCIR, and neither risk groups was 28.9 %, 19.8 %, 20.4 %, and 30.9 %, respectively. Comparative analysis revealed that LA patients exhibited significantly higher age (P < 0.001), elevated BMI (P < 0.001), increased hypertension prevalence (P = 0.004), greater RIR proportion (P < 0.001), and higher smoking rates (P = 0.007) compared to non-LA counterparts. Ordinal logistic regression analysis demonstrated that RIR (OR 1.447, 95 % CI 1.044-1.851, P < 0.001) was independently associated with the severity of LA after adjusting for multiple confounding variables. Subgroup analysis stratified by BMI further revealed that RIR (OR 2.994, 95 % CI 2.259-3.730, P < 0.001) was significantly correlated with LA severity in patients with a BMI ≥ 25.0.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that RIR may serve as an independent risk factor for LA in patients with ischemic stroke, particularly among those with a BMI ≥25.0.

Keywords: Inflammatory risk; Ischemic stroke; Leukoaraiosis.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Jun Lu reports financial support was provided by Anhui University of Science and Technology. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Publication types

MeSH terms